UPDATE (3/14/22): The latest update of Invisibly has completely squandered a decent idea. You still like/dislike articles in exchange for points, but instead of being able to cash them out via Paypal, you instead use them to unlock Associated Press content blocked behind a paywall. Uh…what?

I suppose this might be good for people who like to stay on top of the latest news, and who don’t already subscribe to some sort of media publication, which should describe…what, around 0.01% of the U.S. populace? But for anyone hoping to make a few bucks off of their data – you know, the very idea the company proposed – then there is no need to even waste your time with this one. 

NEW RATING: 0/10. (-3.5)

WHAT IS IT?

Are you sick of companies stealing your data and privacy, and leaving you with nothing to show for it? Invisibly is a brand new program (still in beta) that endeavors to pay you for the data it collects, via your own voluntary actions.

INTERFACE/NAVIGATION

To its credit, using Invisibly is remarkably simple. After signing up, you are then taken to your “feed”, which consists of movies, food recipes, articles, and other categories based on interests you select.

At its core, it’s basically another social media site, only you’re inundated with ads and (presumably) paid content instead of rambling posts from your friends about how liberals are ruining America. There are no users you can follow, or really anything else you can do, besides “like”, “dislike” and “save” posts to read for later.

The UI is much cleaner than other social media sites, since other people can’t post to your wall (or vice versa), so the layout is virtually uncluttered, with rows of articles, recipes and other forms of media. It sounds rather stupid – because it is – but I did discover a few movies I’d never heard about, and some articles that seemed genuinely interesting. I also get recipes, even though I clearly listed “food” as a disinterest, simply to get rid of the overload of recipes I was already getting. So much for the assurance that every bit of feedback is “improving my feed”.

The idea is all right, but one complaint I have about the setup is that, clicking on an article (or recipe, or whatever) merely takes you to a “landing page” for that article, which is basically a larger version of the thumbnail you just clicked on. In order to actually access the content, you must click the “View” button that appears in the window in the upper right hand corner.

It’s not that clicking an extra time is all that difficult, but it also feels completely unnecessary from a user standpoint. Maybe it helps with tracking, or something from a developer standpoint, but when you are trying to entice people into consuming content, any extra requirements can turn people away. It’s sad, but it’s a true fact in today’s ADHD-riddled world. Why couldn’t they just link the media directly from your feed?

The last problem I have is that you have to sign in every single time. Maybe it’s because I use Google as my login provider (although I can’t see how it makes a difference), but no matter how quickly I return to the site after closing out, I have to sign in again. I can see being logged out after a specified time period – maybe 24 hours at the least – but to require a login every single time seems like complete overkill. Especially for a site that pays out so little in comparison; it’s the type of thing that’s going to turn off potential users who are on the fence about using it.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

As mentioned before, it’s very easy: As you scroll through your feed, you can either “like”, “dislike”, or “save” each post for later. For every item you like or dislike, you get 1 point, which is the equivalent of one penny. Once you hit 500 points ($5) you can cash out to PayPal – and that currently seems to be the only payment option. Curiously, you do not get anything for bookmarking an item (unless, of course, you “like” or “dislike” it beforehand).

But what’s going on behind the scenes? From Invisibly’s perspective, a lot of the information that data brokers currently get are very vague, which has led to very small click-through rates in the advertising industry. For example, a user might click on one football story for the entire year, and is then considered a football fan to advertisers. Multiply that by all the users online, and you can see there’s a massive amount of incorrect information that advertisers are attempting to cater to.

And that is where you step in. Invisibly takes all of the data you willingly provide, and sells it to advertisers, with the idea that it’s much higher quality because you’re voluntarily filling out all of the data yourself. In exchange for this, the user receives 50% of what their information is worth. If you don’t feel comfortable sharing certain information (for example, I’m a little leery of sharing my bank account info, especially for a mere $.10/month), then you don’t have to share it…you control whatever information you want to give Invisibly.

Don’t want to share any of your information? Then this clearly isn’t the app for you.

HOW MUCH CAN I MAKE?

Not much. Not much at all. You know how I mentioned that you get a point for everything you interact with on your feed? Yeah, well what I didn’t mention is that there’s a 20-point limit per day. That means that, assuming you sign in and use the site every single day, you will be making $1 every 5 days, at most. And at that rate, it will take you 25 days to reach the cashout minimum.

Also, as I mentioned in the previous section, you can connect bank account and install the Chrome extension to make some extra money through what Invisibly refers to as “Data Dividends”. When I first signed up a couple of months ago, they allowed you to link social media sites on top of their bank account and Chrome extension options to earn extra money. And they paid 200 points for the latter, and 75 points for the former (per month). Each social media account also netted around 25 or so points, giving you the chance to earn extra points in order to cashout quicker.

However, they just “updated” the site with a message that states all the social media connections are being axed (supposedly temporarily), leaving only the Chrome extension and bank account as options to connect. And in what can only be described as “terribly misguided”, they now only give you 20 points for the former, and 10 points for the latter. Meaning if you give them your banking information, you get a whopping 10 cents per month. I don’t know many people who would have done it when it was $.75…dropping it down to $.10 drops that list of people down to “none”.

Honestly, I’m not exactly sure how the payment for Data Dividends work, but I got a 15 point payout on the 15th of the month I signed up (October), and then the remaining 34 points on the 25th. Then in November – my first full one on the site – I received 34 points on the 15th, and then another 34 on the 25th. So it seems to be every couple of weeks, or so, but not really sure about the specific schedule. With the social media options eliminated, my earnings through the dividends took a huge nosedive: I now make 5 points every few days. Five. Down from 34. That makes the app even more pointless than it already was.

Another issue I have: It’s also unclear how the payout for “connections” operate. Each connection is listed next to the amount of monthly points you accrue for linking them. When I first signed up, I had 335 points worth of monthly connections…and only received about 74 out of that total over the month. I finally referred to the FAQ, which went into slightly more detail, by saying the total displayed is what you can “expect” to make in a given month, although there are no specifics beyond that. So how in the hell does one make the maximum amount of money? By posting more to social media (when those connections are available)? By using Chrome for a certain amount of time? And why the hell is the bank account connection worth even less than the stupid Chrome extension? For a “privacy forward” app, there seems to be much less transparency than one might expect.

Again, the pop-up message made it sound like the decrease in connections is only temporary while they build the next beta release: presumably once it opens up to the public, they will be added once again. The owner – who’s none other than the co-founder of Square – has gone on record saying that users of the current version can make anywhere from “$60 – $100” per year using the site (although with data dividends being decreased, I would imagine that number would be much lower now). However, he says once they attract more and/or larger advertisers, that number could skyrocket up to $1,000. Per year, per user. That could certainly make things more worthwhile for a lot of people.

But that’s also a great big “if”.

PAYOUT OPTIONS

Now, the only payout option is to read Associated Press articles that are locked behind a paywall. It costs 3 Invisibly points per article. “Let’s have your data, and we’ll pay you in articles.” Yeah, that sounds like a real sustainable business model.

 As stated before, the minimum cashout amount is $5 (or 500 points). Once you accrue that amount, you can cash out to PayPal. Currently, that seems to be the only way you can get paid, so if you don’t have a Paypal account, and are unwilling to create one, then this will be a waste of your time. It will be interesting to see if they add additional options at some point in the future, especially as the site exits beta mode and goes public.

Another note: You have to be a member for at least 30 days before cashing out for the first time, but considering it will probably take longer than that for new users to reach the minimum threshold, that shouldn’t be a problem for anyone. At least not in its current state.

It took me about a month-and-a-half to accrue the 500-point minimum required for cashing out; it should be noted that I used it off-and-on when I remembered it, so it wasn’t a consistent, every day type of thing. The second time I cashed out it took me less than a month, thanks to the increase of data dividends; with those being axed to an almost nonexistent number for me, it will probably take me at least two months to be able to cash out again. For $5. That’s not really worthwhile.

Since the app is in “beta” (which I’m saying for the hundredth time, and will still state a few more times below), I’m going to stick around at least for a few more months to see if anything changes for the better. If nothing else, I would imagine payments would increase once the app goes “live” so that they can entice more users into joining; since there are a growing number of apps that claim to give users a percentage of the money they earn, they’ll need to pull out all the stops in order to attract more users.

AVAILABILITY

In the only positive update since this review was posted, Invisibly is now available on the Google Play Store, as well as the Apple App Store. Previously, the Android app was riddled with so many bugs that you couldn’t even log in, but they fixed that just in time for this app to completely suck.